ODYSSEY

The shore of beautiful Lake Constance

June 18:  Little did we know how bad this day would be. We ate breakfast at the gasthaus and were on the road before 9 a.m. We decided we had to chose between going to Lake Constance or the Vogtsbauernhof or Black Forest Open Air Museum--not both. We both wanted to see Lake Constance, then proceed straight to Obernai, France, where we had a reservation for the next five nights. According to Google, it was less than a four-hour drive, so that would give us some time to explore Lake Constance.

This supposedly four-hour tour turned into a 14-hour ordeal over two days. Some of it was our fault, but some of the delay was beyond anything we could have controlled. Lake Constance is about 40 miles long running east to west, and there are two roads that parallel the lake. One road is next to the water and goes through all the little towns along the lake, the other is perhaps a mile north and bypasses most of the villages. We had a detailed Michelin map of Baden-Wurttemberg, but it was not detailed enough for all the confusing signs along the road. We were going slow and steady with only a few missteps when at the west end of the lake, with no warning, the road was closed because of construction.We had to double back to Sipplingen where a helpful woman at the tourist office told us we needed to go back about five more miles and take another road to Stockach. We missed the road to Stockach, because the signs were akimbo. We turned around, but by this time the traffic was stopped, due to an accident. We waited quite awhile, then started up again and got past the accident, then realized we were going east, the wrong way! At this point, it was impossible to go back, because traffic was backed up several miles going west.

We made an executive, but ultimately wrong, decision to take a road north to Ravensburg and totally bypass Lake Constance. Again, we ran into road construction as we went through Bad Salgau and Sigmaringen. Our new route was as slow as the old one. We were getting tired and called our host in Obernai and told her we'd be a day late. We made our way to Titisee and found a lovely little gasthaus and spent the night. By the time we arrived there, it was 6:30 p.m. and we had been on the road for 10 hours with about four brief stops. If today were a TV show, it would be either "Gilligan's Island" (three-hour tour) or "Lost." We were exhasted and stressed. We walked into town and ate a good meal at an Italian-German restaurant, then walked home and went to bed.

There was a silver lining to today. We saw lots of southern Germany, and it is very beautiful. The farmland and little villages are picturesque. It was as if the gods had aligned against us in our odyssey, but we knew we could do better tomorrow. We had learned a few things about navigating in Europe. We also understood why people sign up for tours.